John Leland in his book on "hip" notes that the term derives from Africa. In this piece Jesse Sheidlower argues that this is bunk.
He's most likely right.
Now I believe there are a variety of loan words and concepts that do come from Africa. If you check out Sheidlower TODAY for example, you'd see a picture of Miles Davis blowing. If you listen to Kind of Blue, you can hear a distinct African influence. Miles was trying to capture a very specific kind of sound that he'd heard there.
But the type of sensibility that makes African American culture special should be understood as a thing that has roots that stem back to Africa...but as a distinctly American enterprise.
Here I'm not talking about material culture, but culture as an approach to reality. As a style. You ever heard of the poem "If".
The first line:
"If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you."
When I talk about the African American cultural sensibility as I LIVE it, this is what I'm talking about. Not only being calm under pressure but actually being cool in a figurative and a literal sense.
Posted by: Lester Spence at December 11, 2004 05:55 PM
Spence, I hope you got your mojo working brah, cause you've begged a question of GUT level complexity. Or maybe not....,
Please describe the specialness - as you *live* it - of the African American cultural sensibility?
Posted by: cnulan at December 10, 2004 10:20 AM